Re: Celtica (was: Maggel)

>> Steg Said;
>> Anyone know why Scottish Gaelic accents go "\" and Irish Gaelic ones go
>> "/" ?
>Ray wRote;
>But as to why Scots Gaelic favors the grave accent & Irish Gaelic the
>acute for marking long vowels, I don't know.
Barbara Babbles;
The apocryphal explanation I heard in college (which I've never seen
confirmed by any historian) is that  when Scots Gaelic began to appear as a
written language in its own right in printed materiel in the late 18thC the
use of the grave over the acute was a deliberate choice of the printers to
visually differentiate written Scots Gaelic from written Irish Gaelic.

This seems plausable because Irish Gaelic was a written language before it
was introduced to Scotland around the 5/6th century, and Irish Gaelic
remained the literary standard for written Gaelic in Scotland until the
early 18thC (EG; the Scots Liturgy of 1567 and the Scots Bible of 1690 are
essentially Irish Gaelic). IIRC the 18thC saw a flourish in Scotland and
Wales of establishing strong national identities and revivals of "native"
languages, so the story fits with the "mood of the times".

What baffles me is how come when one uses the word "Gaelic" ouside of
Ireland folk assume you mean the Scots dialect rather than the parent
language, even if you use the Irish rather than the Scots pronounciation of
"Gaelic"? It seems that in English; Irish=Gaelic but Gaelic=Scots Gaelic:
Wierd.

Barbara

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